In-depth articles
Contact is a parking structure and ageHa is closed. A room-by-room, honest guide to where Tokyo's house and techno scene actually lives in 2026: WOMB, Vent, Circus Tokyo and Forestlimit.
Once a month, the techno club Undercity turns its dancefloor into rows of bean bags for a silent reading session, DJ included. It's called Reading City, and it's not a gimmick, it's a serious techno room finding a second life.
Chiang Mai's electronic scene doesn't live on a strip. It's scattered across a converted shophouse, a top-floor room above Huay Kaew Road, and a hillside outside Mae Rim where the party runs until 6am.
Bangkok has dozens of sky bars selling a view. Very few of them book a DJ who actually plays house. Here's how to tell the difference, floor by floor.
Zamaera self-funded the first national Malaysian showcase in SXSW's history. The lineup was mostly rap, R&B and indie folk, but the set that closed it belonged to a techno producer nobody outside Malaysia had heard of yet.
Phuket's clubbing scene isn't Bangla Road neon. It's four rooms spread across the west coast: a sunset beach club, an Ibiza import with a real booking policy, one underground bar in Rawai, and a 5,000-capacity room if you want the big room instead.
Southeast Asia doesn't really have record shops built for house and techno the way Berlin or London does. What it has instead, city by city, is more interesting: soul, funk and reissue specialists who happen to stock the electronic stuff too.
No DJ booth, no dance floor, just a serious hi-fi rig and a wall of records. A guide to the listening bars and record bars actually worth the taxi fare in Bangkok and Tokyo.
Korner closed in 2018 and took Taipei's underground techno home with it. The same crew reopened one floor under a gym, called it Pawnshop, and Smoke Machine has been playing there almost every week since.
Phnom Penh will not hand you a scene the way Bangkok or Bali will. It has one club that used to be an actual floating boat, one alley that actually pulses after midnight, and a handful of people building the rest from nothing. Here is where to go, what it costs, and how to get home.
Finns, Potato Head's Klymax, Mrs Sippy and Karma Beach: Bali's real house music scene now happens in daylight, feet in the sand, hours before the island's night clubs even open.
Bandung producer Munir has spent over a decade digging up and re-splicing Indonesia's forgotten 1970s and 80s disco records, from a Cultures of Soul compilation named after Jakarta's first discotheque to his own synth-driven Komputer EP.